Cedric Mullins must replace someone on the NY Mets roster, this is how to handle it

Cedric Mullins will replace Tyrone Taylor as the starting center fielder for the New York Mets. However, it’s someone else he will replace altogether on the roster. Barring a final hour trade at the deadline, one of their young players is getting sent to the minors. Ronny Mauricio has hit far too well this past week to be in the conversation, leaving the Mets with essentially a choice between Brett Baty and Luisangel Acuna.

Acuna is the simple choice. He is pretty irrelevant despite having his use as a speedster off the bench. But demoting him for all of August will burn through his final minor league option. This isn’t something the Mets should be so eager to do.

Squeezing the rules by not breaking but bending them, whoever gets replaced on the roster by Mullins is probably going to spend less than 20 days in the minor leagues to save those final minor league options. Acuna, Baty, and Mauricio each have one and none of the three spent enough time in Syracuse this season to have it used up.

Here’s what the Mets should do with their roster

It should be Acuna or Baty who gets sent down for a half month with the other on-deck to get sent down around August 19; unless Mauricio has fallen off. The preferable choice would seem to have the Mets demoting Acuna immediately with Baty sticking around as a left-handed option at second base and third base.

He, too, seems a little less important right now to the Mets. With Jeff McNeil moving back to second base almost full-time, the only available extra at-bats the Mets may be able to find for anyone is at the DH spot against a right-handed pitcher. Mark Vientos and Starling Marte aren’t exactly an ideal platoon with both swinging from the right side.

David Stearns has been a master at legal roster manipulation. Surely, he is already planning how he’ll shuffle these players around; unless a trade offer he cannot resist comes in within the next hour.

It can’t hurt the Mets to let Acuna soar in center field for two weeks as a center fielder for Syracuse. If he’s going to be their September call-up candidate to provide them speed and maybe even join them for a postseason run in the same role, it’s best to utilize him in the most versatile way possible.